The Letters To The Seven Churches In Revelation: The Church In Ephesus Series

What are the authoritative sources in your life? What are they? This is way more important than we might realize. What do we trust for information on how we should successfully live our lives?

We could list some out. Most would say their parents, information from the education system, television, tv news, doctors, academics, trusted friends, or college.

When we receive information from these various sources we tend to trust the information we receive as being something we can believe is true.

I have certain sources that I trust completely. There are other sources that I kind of trust. And there are other sources that I distrust. Still other sources I outright reject, I refuse to believe the information they tell me because I know it will tend to be false.

What are your authoritative sources?

Prior to becoming a Christian my highest trusted sources would’ve been news media, doctors, things I learned in college, science, experts, and so on.

Today after becoming a Christian that list would be very different. I tend to distrust the news media. I tend to distrust things that I had been taught in college, I tend to be more skeptical of the claims of experts and scientists. Today my highest trusted authority is of course the Bible, the word of God. I also tend to trust many teachers of the word of God.

The Bible went from having 0 authority in my life, to having prime authority in my life.

What is your authority? Is it the bible? Or do you trust the news and the experts and the proclamations of society more?

It’s not something we’re suddenly immune to once we become Christians. Even as Christians we can distrust the Bible and put too much trust in culture and society and the television. That’s why you see Christians who support abortion or gay marriage. That’s why you see Christians who champion political causes they’ve seen in the news that actually contradict the word of God.

This world has many deceptions. Be careful what you’re believing. Be sure to trust God over any man or woman.

So, today, we begin a new series, where we’ll be examining 7 letters that Jesus gave, in the book of Revelation.

We talked about how even as Christians we can be deceived. Many Christians refuse to open the book of Revelation. They’re afraid of it. And they don’t like the way God is portrayed in Revelation. Even someone like Martin Luther the greater reformer disliked the book of Revelation and didn’t regard it as Holy Spirit inspired, but later in his life he did begin to speak more positively of it. He said similar things about the book of James as well. Should we dislike Revelation? Or run from it? No, absolutely not. The book of Revelation is wonderful. It’s one of my favorite books.

And I think in the letters to the seven churches we can find a great deal of useful and wise teachings in it’s pages.

As we begin this series I’d like to give you a proper introduction. Tradition indicates that all of the disciples of Jesus lost their lives as they traveled to proclaim the message of His resurrection. All of them aside from one, John, who was poisoned, but survived, and was later exiled to the island of Patmos.

While John was on the island of Patmos, he received a vision from God, through Jesus Christ, describing the events of the end times, as well as messages to seven churches, the first churches, of the body of Christ, giving each church a different message about their journey in serving Jesus on the Earth.

Each of the seven churches received a different and unique message. Many of the churches were encouraged, others were rebuked, some received only praise, other received only correction. I wonder what Jesus would say to our little church today? Would he encourage us, rebuke us, or both? I wonder.

Let’s dive into the word, you can open your Bibles to the book of Revelation.

From Revelation 1:1-3 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to Him to show to His servants things which must soon take place. He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, 2 who bears record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.”

We’re told we’ll receive a special blessing by reading these words aloud, which is wonderful. We see this Revelation, singular, is from Jesus, given to John, to be shared with us, the body of believers today.

So I’m just going to read through the first chapter here, and try to give you a feel for what John is seeing and what is being shared, it says this: